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“Jesus Christ, Madison.” He stared back at me, completely unapologetic. “Like I said, if Molly told you the truth about Mueller you might have tried to warn Sadie and Jasper. You might feel something for them, but I don’t, and I can’t risk that, not until I know the full story.”
“Fuck you, Jamie.”
“Yeah, we’ll get to that. For now, tell me you wouldn’t have run to Sadie or Kat, who took you in and gave you a job, and told them, no warned them, that Mueller was undercover FBI. Go on, tell me.”
I opened my mouth. Once. Twice. Three fucking times to deny it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t say with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t have let word slip because despite the lies and the secrecy, I did feel a certain loyalty to the Ashby family.
“Maybe I would have, but you know I’ve been trying to find my sister.”
“Bullshit. You say that you want to find her, but you’ve had that name for a week and you didn’t do shit with it until recently.” He huffed out a bitter laugh and went to the kitchen for a beer. “Yeah, Calvin Ashby told me he’d found her new ID and gave it to you.”
“What?”
Jamie shoved a beer in my hand and took a long pull from his bottle. “You’re afraid. That’s why you didn’t reach out to her. Maybe the dysfunction of the Ashbys is finally rubbing off on you. Maybe it’s what you want or maybe it’s all you fucking know so you gravitate to that dysfunction, Maddie. I don’t know, I really don’t know anymore.”
I stood too fast and knocked over the beer bottle. “You’re kidding, right? Of course, I want to find Molly. That’s the whole damn reason I’m still here.”
“Good to know.”
Jamie’s words contained a world of hurt, and I instantly felt sorry.
“You know what I mean, Jamie. Don’t try to put this on me. I finally heard from Molly after more than a year with no contact, and she told me to stop calling her. Why?”
He didn’t have answers and I didn’t expect him to, so I went to the kitchen and grabbed a roll of paper towels to clean up the spilled beer. “I’m sorry. Sorry I ever came here.”
“Oh, no, sweetheart, I don’t fucking think so.”
Before I could get to the door, Jameson had his big hand wrapped around my arm, yanking me backward.
“Sit your pretty little ass down, right here, and read the rest of the file. Read the whole goddamned thing so you know the whole truth of what Molly’s been through, of what Mueller did for her.”
I stood and shook my head because there was something in his tone that made me uneasy and slightly nauseous. “No, I don’t need—”
He put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down. “Sit. The. Fuck. Down. Read the fucking file, Maddie. You’re so sure that I’d take Mueller’s side, the FBI’s side without proof, so you sit your ass right there and read every fucking page.”
Guilt twisted in my gut. I shook my head. “You know I didn’t mean that, Jamie. I was upset. Hurt.”
“Just fucking read it!”
His words came out on a menacing roar that pulled a shocked gasp out of me.
My shoulders fell, and I nodded. “Okay. Fine, I’ll read it. Just one thing.”
“Read it, Maddie.”
“I will, but I’m sorry for questioning your loyalty, Jamie. You’ve been nothing but good to me.”
Maybe I was too fucked up in the head to appreciate that the way I should. Maybe he was just too good for the likes of me.
“Despite that, you don’t trust me.” He shook his head, a whole cast of emotions played across his face—anger, sadness and betrayal at the top of the list—and sighed. “I love you, Maddie, I really do, but this, us, will never work if you act up when you don’t get your way. If you can’t find a way to trust me, then yeah, maybe we are just fuck buddies.”
I was stuck on the I love you part of his little speech, and I stared at his handsome face for a long time, wondering if I’d imagined those words. Jamie Ellison said he loved me. Me, the tomboy from the shitty end of the trailer park. I shook my head, unable to believe it, no matter how desperate I was for it to be true.
“Jamie. I do trust you. I do.”
“It’s easy to say, Maddie. Read the fucking file and then show me.”
He walked away, pouring beer down his throat. Jamie let the back door smack shut and left me alone with the Mueller file.
And feelings I didn’t know how to handle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jameson
What the fuck was I thinking, falling for woman so tangled up with the Ashbys? Couldn’t shit ever be simple? Couldn’t just one fucking thing in my life be simple? Easy? At least un-fucking-complicated?
